As requirements for data storage density increase for magnetic media, cell size decreases. One technique for adapting the magnetic medium to utilize smaller cells while preventing adjacent data from being overwritten during a write operation is shingled magnetic recording (SMR). SMR allows for increased areal density capability (ADC) as compared to conventional magnetic recording (CMR) but at the cost of some performance ability. As used herein, CMR refers to a system that allows for random data writes to available cells anywhere on a magnetic media. In contrast to CMR systems, SMR systems are designed to utilize a write element with a write width that is larger than a defined track pitch. As a result, changing a single data cell within a data track entails re-writing a corresponding group of shingled (e.g., sequentially increasing or decreasing) data tracks.
In SMR systems, a risk of data degradation exists due to an effect known as adjacent track erasure (ATE). Some systems implement one or more integrity-assurance techniques, such as direct offline scans or periodic track re-writes, to monitor and reduce data degradation. Better data management techniques are desired to reduce a strain on processing resources and increase storage device performance while achieving or improving upon the ADC of these existing systems.